There is a continuing need to analyze containers of volatile mixtures, such as mixtures of fluorocarbon liquids and other lower boiling organic gas mixtures. The concentration of the components in the vapor space above such liquids does not always correspond to the concentration in the liquid state due to several reasons. One factor is due to Raoults Law which states that the vapor concentration of a component depends upon the molefraction of that component in the liquid states. A second factor is that the vapor represents a distillation of the components in the liquid state, and many times the distillation will represent an azeotropic distillation in which the concentration of components in the liquid will control the concentration in the vapor state. It is also true that layering can occur of components in the vapor state due to differing densities in the several gases.
Another method of achieving a gas whose composition is equal to that of the liquid in a container of volatile liquids is the evaporation of a quantity of the material which requires heat and gives a gas of uncertain pressure values, is more difficult to carry out in a precise fashion and obtain correct analytical results, nor does such a method remove the oil which will be present in a quantitative fashion.
The invention described below precludes these sorts of complexities and gives every time an analysis of the liquid state which is not skewed by any known factors on a gas at a known pressure.